All Aboard the PostgreSQL Train with Bruce Momjian

Bruce Momjian joins us to explore why PostgreSQL continues to outpace proprietary databases - not just in features, but also in its development model and architecture.

We trace Postgres’s 39-year lineage - from its Berkeley origins and Michael Stonebraker’s vision for extensibility, through early debates about removing that extensibility, to the decades in which that design proved pivotal. That architecture has paid off repeatedly, enabling JSON/JSONB, full-text search, PostGIS, and pgvector to land at the right moments without upheaval. Bruce explains why transparent data encryption (TDE) hasn’t landed in core, when sharding actually helps versus scaling up, and how storage choices (latency, power-loss protection) shape performance; we also look at async I/O in Postgres 18, extension-friendly interfaces like table access methods, and what it means to stay ‘on the train’ within the community.

Topics include:

• 39-year history: Berkeley origins, Stonebraker’s vision for extensibility, and community longevity
• The four motivations for open source contributors: puzzles, giving back, career growth, and need
• Postgres’s extensibility: from an early burden to a superpower (PostGIS, full-text search, JSON/JSONB, pgvector)
• Why TDE is hard in core: technical value versus code complexity
• Scaling and storage: latency, power-loss protection, and async I/O in Postgres 18
• Aurora/Neon and decoupled storage/compute: niche wins versus staying on the community ’train’

Bruce also shares his approach to lifelong learning, why foundational skills compound, and how the Postgres community keeps engineers at the forefront - sustaining momentum across decades.

Show Links

Bruce generously shared links to all the presentations (with direct references to the discussed slides) and blog articles mentioned in the episode. You’ll find them below:

• Bruce Momjian’s Website
• PostGIS
• pgvector
• PostgreSQL JSON Types
• Citus
• EDB (EnterpriseDB)
• Amazon Aurora
• Neon Serverless Postgres
• Async I/O in Postgres 18
• Bruce’s Blog: Selecting Presentations
• Presentation: Three Key Attributes of Postgres (2006 Conference)
• Presentation: The PostgreSQL Open Source Development Process (Our Developers)
• Presentation: Will Postgres Live Forever? (Proprietary Development Flow)
• Presentation: Will Postgres Live Forever? (Many Focuses)
• Presentation: The Postgres Trajectory (PostgreSQL Evolution)
• Presentation: The Postgres Trajectory (Today’s Data Source)
• Postgres Wiki: Transparent Data Encryption
• Bruce’s Blog: Wish I Was Wrong About TDE
• Presentation: Battling the NoSQL Hype Cycle with Postgres
• Presentation: The Future of Postgres Sharding
• Bruce’s Blog: Sharding Status
• Presentation: Database Hardware Selection Guideline
• Bruce’s Blog: Power-Loss Protection
• Presentation: Future Postgres Challenges (Strong Diversified Assistance)